From Okinawa with Love
SUNAIRI Hiroshi
- Japan, USA
- 2022
- 101min
- 18 +
- DCP
- color/black and white
World Premiere
Synopsis
An Okinawan photographer, Mao Ishikawa spent her early 20s working as a barmaid in establishments catered specifically to African American GIs stationed in Okinawa. “There was love,” as the tagline reads, her photography book, 『Red Flower – The Women of Okinawa』 captured the diaristic intimacy of friendships, love affairs, and wild nights shared amongst her social circle of that time.
Review
Hiroshi Sunairi is a New York-based film director born in Japan, and he visited Okinawa-based photographer Mao Ishikawa from 2017 to 2019. Ishikawa is the intersection between history and individual and worked as a bartender at a store for black American soldiers stationed at Okinawa Koza and Kin Town in the 1970s. Sunairi makes a documentary about the interesting life of a woman who spent her 20s in the 1970s with the scenery of times, her struggles with cancer, and a close examination of her photographic works. The film combines Ishikawa’s comments and photographs from her photobooks, Hot Days in Camp Hansen, Hot Day in Okinawa, and Red Flower- Woman of Okinawa. The disordered graphic texts function as a visual signal that reflects Ishikawa’s life. Sunairi also blends the format of biography and style of documentary to express a portion of youth days. The film explores an impressive figure and shows introspection on arts to overlap the visual testimony of the Cold War Era and the life story of a woman who fought against colonialism.Director
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SUNAIRI Hiroshi
Born in Hiroshima in 1972, Sunairi lives in NYC. In the last decade, Sunairi has been making film works, expanding and experimenting with content and form of documentary/fiction films. From personal issues to collective memory and the public sphere, Sunairi creates each film’s distinct approach and style.